Must Read News Articles – February 23, 2018

A new country-wise ranking of neonatal mortality rates — the number of babies dying in their first month for every thousand live births — gives India cause for both hope and shame. Shame, because the report, produced by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), ranks India behind poorer countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Rwanda.

Till two years ago, not a single woman in Waluj village of Mohol Taluka in Solapur district, 400 km from Mumbai, knew what a gram sabha was. Purdah was widely prevalent and women were labourers at home and farms.

Visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and the Modi government faced a major embarrassment on Thursday after it emerged that a convicted terrorist and Khalistan activist from Canada had been part of the delegation’s events in Mumbai and was personally invited to a reception by the Canadian High Commission in Delhi.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday said while the focus of his relations with India has shifted from aid in the 1950s to trade today, it was important to ensure that greater bilateral trade and investment benefits all, especially the poor.

The Donald Trump administration is not satisfied with the measures taken by Pakistan in recent months to crack down on terrorist groups, a senior U.S official has said. “So far, these steps have been reversible, superficial, and steps that we have actually seen them take in the past, in periods of high pressure,” the official told The Hindu in an exclusive conversation on background.

A day after Justice Kurian Joseph voiced his concern over a February 8 judgment on land acquisition, two separate Supreme Court Benches, led by Justice Arun Mishra and Justice A.K. Goel, on Thursday referred certain land acquisition cases so far heard by them, to Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to take a call.

Courts cannot annul marriages between two consenting adults or resort to a “roving enquiry” on whether the married relationship between a man and a woman is based on consent, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.

With an additional allocation of 14.75 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water to Karnataka, the Supreme Court has given the State reason to rejoice. The order is fair and does not take away anything significant from Tamil Nadu. What it has done is to address some concerns that were present in the 2007 order of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, such as of drinking water in Bengaluru and the constraints of irrigation in southern Karnataka.

As online transactions become a way of life, the Consumer Protection Bill, 2018 is a step towards providing ordinary consumers some protection of their interests and establishing points for quick and effective administration and settlement of disputes.

Blockchain could be the least elucidated among the disruptive technologies rapidly transforming the world around us. It is widely known that some of the most valuable companies of our times, such as Uber and Airbnb, are effective aggregators of resources, including cars and apartments. They are using the Internet to reach out, and match the supply and demand in a global market.

The government on Thursday unveiled a ‘strategic plan’ to enable seven state-owned companies under the Department of Telecom (DoT) to work closely with an aim of promoting greater operational synergy among them, including pooling in of resources and effective utilisation of human resources as well as land and buildings.

In October 2017, the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, published by the peer-reviewed Lancet medical journals, attributed to air pollution an estimated 6.5 million premature deaths globally, with 1.1 million being from India.